Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts
Wednesday 18th October 2017

(7 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Rory Stewart Portrait Rory Stewart
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Absolutely. In this, as with everything, the devil is in the detail. For example, through TradeMark East Africa, DFID is not just supporting light manufacturing and trade and tariff negotiations, but reducing delays at borders and investing in infrastructure. Of course, most importantly, we will be providing tariff-free access to the least developed countries in the world after Brexit.

Ian C. Lucas Portrait Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
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School students from Lesotho are visiting Wrexham this week for the 11th year as a result of building on global school partnerships. Why is Lesotho excluded from the list of countries that the Department is supporting, which the Minister gave earlier?

Rory Stewart Portrait Rory Stewart
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This is a very good challenge. This is partly to do with Lesotho’s economic status, as DFID has tended to concentrate on the poorest countries in the world. However, we take the current difficulties in Lesotho very seriously, and I hope to visit it in the near future to look directly at this issue.